Slashing of State Ads forces Stabroek News to hike price – says Management

Dec 30, 2019 News

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by Kemol King

Stabroek News has announced a price hike on its daily edition following what it describes as a sustained assault on press freedom by the Government of Guyana. The increase is from $80 to $100, effective from January 1, 2020. The newspaper had not raised the price since October 11, 2011 and had been, for several years, accommodating rising expenses. But in a recent announcement, Stabroek News notified the public that this increase was necessary because it is earning less revenue from State advertisements due to the withholding of those by the Government’s public relations arm, the Department of Public Information (DPI).
In September, an article in the Sunday Stabroek titled ‘DPI cuts state ads in Stabroek News’ revealed results of an analysis it conducted on the placement of State ads in the four daily newspapers: Kaieteur News, Stabroek News, Guyana Chronicle, and Guyana Times.
The newspaper stated that it has noticed a marked decline in the number of State ads placed per column inches as of June 2019 in the Stabroek News and Guyana Times, but no corresponding decrease in Kaieteur News and the State-owned Guyana Chronicle.
The reductions have been criticised by two regional newspapers, Trinidad Express and the Barbados Nation.
Attached to this article was an updated tabulation by Stabroek News of ad placements in the four newspapers, dated up to November last.
SN’s Editor-in-Chief Anand Persaud told Kaieteur News yesterday that it would seek to provide data on the December ad placements as well, once the month ends.
In May, Guyana Publications Incorporated (GPI) – the publisher of Sunday Stabroek and Stabroek News – had indicated to DPI in a letter that it would not carry State advertisements by request of DPI until it substantially relieved the millions it had racked up in debt.
Stabroek News reported that after the substantial settlement was made, GPI wrote in July last, to notify DPI that the flow of advertising would be returned to normalcy. According to Stabroek News’ data, it did not.
In response, DPI had attributed the reduction in State ads entirely to GPI’s May letter, which had requested that DPI substantially pay off its debts or have its ads rejected, despite the newspaper lifting that embargo after the debts were significantly relieved. Persaud has dismissed that explanation as totally unacceptable.
Stabroek News has written extensively and with strong positions on Government’s actions following the passage of the No Confidence Motion in December 21, 2018. The newspaper had suggested that DPI, “clearly rankled”, may be retaliating against it.
President David Granger’s comment on the matter roiled up Stabroek News even more. During an interview on Kaieteur Radio in November, he is quoted as saying, “There must be fairness.”
But the President qualified his statement by continuing: “We believe that advertisements should be directed to the media houses based on their willingness to disseminate news fairly”.
Persaud has said, according to Stabroek News, that any reasonable observer would construe the President’s statement to mean that favourable coverage of the government would be the determining factor in the placement of State ads.

Stabroek News stated that, if it is true that the ads were reduced for those reasons, it would mean that Government has violated the Inter-American Press Freedom Declaration of Chapultepec. Principle 7 of that Declaration, signed by former President, Bharrat Jagdeo, in 2002, prohibits the granting or withdrawal of Government advertising to reward or punish the media or individual journalists.
Commenting on the matter yesterday, Kaieteur News’ Publisher Glenn Lall spoke of how unfortunate it is that attitudes toward criticism cultivated by the Jagdeo regime are being sustained by the current David Granger led administration.
Jagdeo’s Government was guilty of the same action when he served as President.
Stabroek News stated that the Jagdeo’s administration had refused to place a single State ad with the newspaper for 17 months in 2006, with no plausible explanation. Stabroek News stated that it was an attempt to punish the newspaper for affording the fledgling Alliance For Change (AFC) regular column postings.
About the same period, Kaieteur News had suffered a similar fate as Stabroek News has, according to Lall, the Jagdeo Government had also meant to stifle this newspaper for its critical principled reporting.
At that time, the then President Jagdeo had claimed that his decision was because of his Government’s intention to cost-effectively manage its use of state resources, and to explore other avenues for State advertising – not for punitive reasons.
But the former President has since admitted that what he did was wrong.
Lall has assured that Kaieteur News will stand with Stabroek News and any other media house that is penalised for being critical of the Government. Lall said resolutely that Kaieteur News has never wavered, and will not do so in the future, in the face of persecution by any Government.

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